Bare phrase structure
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Bare Phrase Structure (often abbrevaited BPS) is a Minimalist theory of phrase structure (or sentence building in simple terms) invented by linguist Noam Chomsky as the fourth stage of his Generative grammar theory.
This theory contrasts with X-bar theory, which preceded it, in four important ways:
(1) BPS structure is derivational. That is, it is built from the bottom up, bit by bit. X-Bar Theory, on the other hand, is representational. That is, a structure for a given construction is built in one fell swoop, then the lexical items are inserted into the structure.
(2) BPS does not have a preconceived structure, while in X-Bar Theory, every phrase has a specifier and a complement.
(3) BPS has only binary branching while X-Bar Theory permits both binary and unary branching.
(4) BPS does not distinguish between a "head" and a "terminal".
BPS operates with two basic operations, Merge and Move. Although there is current debate on exactly how Move is to be formulated, the differences between the current proposals are minute. The following discussion follows Chomsky's original proposal. Merge is a function that takes two objects (say α and β) and merges them into an unordered set with a label (either α or β, in this case α). The label identifies the properties of the phrase.
Merge (α, β) --> {α, {α, β}}
For example, Merge can operate on the lexical items 'drink' and 'water' to give 'drink water'. Note that the phrase 'drink water' behaves more like the verb 'drink' than like the noun 'water'. That is, where ever we can put the verb 'drink' we can also put the phrase 'drink water':
I like to _____________ (drink)/(drink water).
(Drinking/Drinking water) __________ is fun.
Furthermore, we can't put the phrase 'drink water' in places where we can put the noun 'water':
There's some (water)/(*drink water) on the table. - (They symbol * means the sentence is bad.)
So, we identify the phrase with a label. In the case of 'drink water', the label is 'drink' since the phrase acts as a verb. For simplicity, we call this phrase a verb phrase, or VP. Now, if we were to Merge 'cold' and 'water' to get 'cold water', then we would have a noun phrase, or NP, the label of which would be 'water'. The reader can verify that the phrase 'cold water' can appear in the same environments as the noun 'water' in the three test sentences above. So, for 'drink water' we have the following:
Merge (drink, water) --> {drink, {drink, water}}
We can represent this structurally as follows:
drink
/ \
drink water
or, simply as
VP
/ \
drink water
Speaking abstractly again, Merge can also operate on structures already built. If it couldn't, then we could only speak in two-phrase utterances. So, say we Merge a new object (which we call a 'head') with a previously formed object (which we call a 'phrase').
Merge (γ, {α, {α, β}}) --> {γ, {γ, {α, {α, β}}}}
Here, γ is the label, so we say that γ 'projects'. This corresponds to the following tree structure:
γ
/ \
γ α
/ \
α β
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Chomsky, Noam. 1995. "Bare Phrase Structure", in Gert Webelhuth (ed.) Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. Cambridge: Blackwell. 383-439.
